Sunday, January 29, 2012

Holocaust Memorial Day

The founder of the Holocaust Survivors' Centre in London, Judith Hassan OBE, spent her whole life, or almost, working with survivors. I am honored to have been able to meet her, and her family, when she was only starting it. Her work is wonderful, and so are the people interviewed in that program.

For more information about this, check here. It is the only place of this kind in Britain, and I wish we had one in France, where psychological support of survivors and their descendants started much later. Food and shelter, and even a job and a family weren't quite enough to soothe them, contrary to what was believed in the fifties.

1 Comments:

It is really good that many of the Holocaust survivors have this centre to support them, especially at this stage in their lives. I would hazard a guess that the need for a Holocaust Survivors Centre is greater at this stage in their lives than when they were younger. There were other things to be getting on with in life when younger - namely raising a family, work and generally living life! In 'The Guardian' article ("Safe House") it does mentions that a similar support model was set up in France and Israel but not in which town or city. Possibly these are based in Paris and Tel Aviv?

It was really interesting to read the references in the interviews about the thick soup and bread rolls. The Jewish children brought over to the English Lake District in 1945 used to hide huge chunks of bread in their clothing. It was difficult to get out of this habit which they had picked up in the concentration camps. These were children who really knew what hunger was!

Below is a link to an earlier BBC TV programme in which two Jewish orphans sspeak of their experiences. (I previously gave this link in connection with another article on '2WW Blog' in 2010). The orphans who survived the Nazi camps